Originally published at: The latest thing on the Internet is people pretending to be uncannily-looping video game character animations | Boing Boing
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Somehow those videos are more unpleasant and creepy than the framing description makes them out to be.
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Not before my coffee. God no.
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An entire generation aspiring to be Max Headroom in “pause” mode.
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I feel like I’ve been dumped into some sort of incel fetish community. These make me want to crawl out of my skin.
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One of the most frightening things I’ve ever heard is when someone pointed out that the existence of the uncanny valley implies that at some point there was an evolutionary reason to be afraid of something that looked human but wasn’t.
This tweet reminds me of a moment i had ages ago when i was still working customer service at a retail chain. Every week or every other week this older very sweet retired gentleman would show up with a stack of women’s clothes to return or exchange. I would guess his wife had mobility or health issues and he was shopping for her, but i don’t remember… it’s been a while.
Anyway one day while he’s doing returns an intrusive thought popped into my head. This incredibly sweet, friendly older man didn’t have a wife. This was all an act, somewhere deep down this man was dangerous. I look up from the counter into his eyes and he smiles warmly at me, and i could feel my blood run cold in fear. Of course it only lasted for like a second before i realized my brain is making shit up but that fraction of a moment really stuck with me, it was somewhat akin to an uncanny valley. That the person in front of me what not entirely what it seemed to be.
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Saw one with a guy running on a beach boardwalk and the ones that make fun of clipping animations and character orientation issues are funny, while these close in women on a 1.5 second loop emphatically are not.
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The scientist* character from the animated series Archer, Algernop Krieger, has a significant other who is a holographic computer generated anime character. …tended to think that was an amusing bit of kink fiction, (after-all Krieger himself is an animated character), now i’m not so sure it isn’t prognostication
(*you can tell he’s a scientist because he always wears a lab-coat)
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It’s definitely riffing on looping Live2d idle animations commonly seen in smartphone games.
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People really need to go outside more.
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So, the last one I have seen a long with a handful of others, where they are basically reacting to stickers (emojis) sent by viewers during a stream. And they have a canned response they do for each one. So it is, in a way, like controlling a game character.
I have only seen a handful, and man, it is weirdly mesmerizing. There is a sort of uncanny valley - but it’s not because I am icked out by it. I guess like watching a break dancer do a flawless robot, having humans imitate machines doesn’t illicit the same response from me than the other way around.
And as I under stand it, each sticker sent is actual money for the streamer. So, uh, more power to them, I guess. How do I get that gig? (guessing the market for 40 something bearded guys with elf ears is significantly less…)
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In this heat? No thanks
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So, I like the ones that are silent or just have muzak playing, very good uncanny-valley creepy-horror stuff, which I’m into.
The ones where they do the anime girl voice… those make me feel like I’m doing something immoral, possibly illegal.
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No! No! No! These people need to stay inside! Well away from me! 
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There is a less-polished version on TikTok that uses the “Choose your character” audio from one of the Smash Bros games. That one is usually just subtle shifting with some funny text over it.
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Similar, but not the same… I miss the old Poppy videos. They were so strange and mysterious when she first started out.
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My favorite theory about the uncanny valley is that it was an evolutionary adaptation to protect ourselves from narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths (which are evolutionary advantageous themselves, like rapists).
Expertly crafted reactions of empathy, but sometimes you know, “something is quite not right.”
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